Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Kill Zero Tolerance

Yes, it sounds crazy, but believe it or not, a growing number of public schools are disciplining students for for hugging. In Missouri, for instance, a junior high student was put in detention for two days after she was seen hugging friends at a football game. In Alabama, another junior high girl was suspended for hugging a male friend who had recently lost a parent. And last year, a four-year-old in Texas was placed into in-school suspension when he hugged a teacher’s aide. A four-year-old!

What's going on here? I thought the slogan was “Hugs, Not Drugs.” How on earth did innocent hugging become so demonized?

Apparently, it originated with the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1999 ruled that schools can be held liable if they ignore claims of sexual harassment. The court, however, offered no guidelines for what constituted sexual harassment, thus leaving it up to the idiots in our nation's schools to figure it out on their own. To be fair, there are a great many school officials who do practice common sense and differentiate between a sexual and a non-sexual hug. But there are just enough idiots turning schools into no-hug zones to give us cause for concern.

What can be done about these idiots? Will there ever be an end to zero tolerance? Are we doomed to live in a world where an innocent hug between friends is considered the same as a lecherous grope, where drawing a picture of a gun is the same as bringing an AK-47 to school, where cutting a cupcake with an unauthorized plastic knife is the same as whipping out a switchblade, where being found in possession of an aspirin is the same as smoking crack? These are just a few of the actual infractions that have caused students to be disciplined under the zero tolerance policies of today’s public schools.

Zero tolerance is supposed to make us feel safe. But it does not make me feel safe, because in practice zero tolerance translates into zero common sense. Zero tolerance only sees the world in two colors: black and white, with no shades of grey. It sees a four-year-old’s affectionate little hug as something sick and depraved. And in the larger world outside school, it sees shoes as potential bombs, confiscates bottled water and nail clippers, puts a deadly chokehold on a 110-pound woman who was upset because she missed a flight, throws a man to the ground and handcuffs him because he jaywalked, and Tases old people in wheelchairs when they don't follow orders fast enough.

Forget the War on Terrorism. We should be fighting zero tolerance. Let’s declare zero tolerance on zero tolerance. Let’s suspend idiot school officials from their own schools. Let’s make it mandatory for cops who misuse their Tasers to be Tased themselves. Let’s pass a new Patriot Act that restores the Constitution and puts all the Neo-Con, PNAC, Bush White House scumbuckets in the concentration camps they’ve been building for us. Then let’s waterboard them all! Yay!